Local officers keep guns, Tasers on opposite hips
Columbus police officers and Franklin County deputies are trained to wear their guns and Tasers on opposite hips to limit the chances of a deadly mistake like the one that appeared to have occurred Sunday in suburban Minneapolis.
But the same protocol exists for police in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, where a 26-year veteran of the force and head of the local police union shot and killed a man with her service weapon after shouting, “Taser, Taser, Taser,” body camera video of the incident shows.
Eric Delbert, a police officer and coowner of L.E.P.D. Firearms Range and Training Facility on Bethel Road, said that what appears to him to be a “tragic accident” isn’t a complete surprise.
The feel of a handgun used by officers and a Taser “aren’t as different as you would think,” Delbert said. The handles “are relatively the same. A trained professional should be able to tell the difference, but under the stress of a rapidly evolving situation, it can be hard to differentiate.”
Even the fact that a Taser is worn on an officer’s non-dominate side and requires a “cross draw” to be pulled by an officer, doesn’t eliminate the chance for a mistake, he said.
“The reason officers do a lot of training with their weapons is so, hopefully, it becomes second nature” to quickly access the right one, Delbert said.
Columbus police train officers to carry their firearm on the hip of their dominant arm and their stun gun or Taser on the hip of their non-dominant arm. This is widely considered to be best practice within policing, said Sgt. Chris Cheatham, the defensive tactics sergeant at the James G. Jackson Police Academy.
“We do that so there’s no confusion,” Cheatham said. “You don’t want the Taser on the same side as the firearm because then you could
cers are always trained to deal with right, so what threat is the biggest threat?” he said.
“Is it the suspect on the ground in front of me in handcuffs that we have relatively controlled? Or is it the unknown threat posed by the crowd that could go from verbal to trying to interfere with my arrest process in a matter of seconds?”
Brodd also appeared to endorse what prosecution witnesses have said is a common misconception: that if someone can talk, he or she can breathe.
“I certainly don’t have medical degrees, but I was always trained and feel it’s a reasonable assumption that if somebody’s, ‘I’m choking, I’m choking,’ well, you’re not choking because you can breathe,” he said.
Chauvin, a 45-year-old white man, is on trial on charges of murder and manslaughter in Floyd’s death last May after his arrest of suspicion of passing a counterfeit $20 at a neighborhood market.
Chauvin attorney Eric Nelson has argued that the 19-year Minneapolis police veteran did what he was trained to do and and that Floyd died because of his illegal drug use and underlying health problems, including high blood pressure and heart disease. Fentanyl and methamphetamine were discovered in his system.
As the defense began presenting its case on Tuesday after the prosecution rested following 11 days of testimony and a mountain of video evidence, Nelson sought to plant doubt in jurors’ minds.
He brought up a 2019 arrest in which Floyd suffered from dangerously high blood pressure and confessed to heavy use of opioids, and he suggested that the Black man may have suffered from “excited delirium” – what a witness described as a potentially lethal state of agitation and even superhuman strength that can be triggered by drug use, heart disease or mental problems.
Nelson called to the stand Nicole Mackenzie, a Minneapolis police training officer, to expound on excited delirium. While Floyd was pinned to the ground, a relatively new officer at the scene had mentioned that the 46-yearold Black man might be suffering from such a condition.
Mackenzie testified that incoming officers are told how to recognize the signs of excited delirium: Suspects may be incoherent, exhibit extraordinary strength, be sweaty or suffering from abnormally low body temperature, or seem like they suddenly snapped.
She said officers are also trained to call paramedics, because a person in that state can rapidly go into cardiac arrest.
Mackenzie testified that she provides training on excited delirium only to new recruits. And Judge Peter Cahill cautioned jurors that there is no evidence Chauvin had the training.
On cross-examination by prosecutors, Mackenzie said she would defer to an emergency room doctor in diagnosing excited delirium.